by Zoe Marriott
A large, warm hand came to rest on my back, between my shoulder blades. Shinobu didn’t speak, or ask me if I was all right again. He just waited: a calm, reassuring presence, demanding nothing, there if I needed him. I forced myself to breathe calmly, waiting for the wave of emotions to pass over me. After another moment, I nodded. “I’m OK. I just want to get this over with.”
The massive wardrobe, decorated with stickers and posters of Jack’s favourite bands, stood in the corner. I went to it and opened both the doors – then stepped back in amazement.
It was like something out of a fashion spread. Footwear was aligned in two perfectly straight lines along the bottom of the wardrobe, with boots at the back and shoes at the front. Each pair was polished and had a pair of socks folded up in the left shoe or boot. Above the shoes, Jack’s clothes were hung up on fancy padded hangers, organized by colour going from black through grey, white, pale pink, dark pink, purple and then blue. One quarter of the wardrobe was taken up with closet shelves, where every item, from T-shirts to jeans to scarves, was folded into a perfect geometric square that I wouldn’t have been able to achieve with two helpers, a ruler, and sticky tape.
I turned my head and looked at the chaos of the room. Then I looked back at the wardrobe.
No wonder she never let me see inside before.
“Jack, you big fat fake.” I let out a laugh that was half sob. “Look at this. Look! She’s the worst neat freak of them all, and I never even knew. I never even knew…”
Trying not to mess anything up too much, I searched through the neat piles of T-shirts until I found what seemed to be a plain, scoop-necked white top with short sleeves. I pulled it out, but when I unfolded it, there turned out to be a tattoo-style design on the front: a skull sitting on a bed of gleaming emeralds, with a green snake poking out of one eyehole. In Gothic lettering underneath, it read WELCOME TO MALFOY MANOR.
Typical Jack, I thought, hugging the shirt to my chest for a second. Pretending to be cool Slytherin when she’s actually swotty Ravenclaw through and through.
I found a long-sleeved black T-shirt and sent Shinobu out so that I could put it on with the white one over the top. Then I finished the outfit off with a loosely fitting dark purple hooded fleece, which hid the katana and its harness as well as anything could. There were tiny vampire bats on the lining of the hood, but otherwise it was about as regulation as Jack got. I checked myself in the full-length mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door.
Well, I was clean. But that was about the only positive. Even fully zipped up, the fleece only partially concealed the necklace of darkening bruises around my throat. Another, older bruise on my jaw was vivid blue-black, while the scratches I’d picked up over my right eyebrow were red and ugly. Shinobu’s white gauze bandage finished the picture of a girl who had been in some kind of horrible accident. How could anyone safely blend in looking like this? I sighed, poking at the gauze.
The katana pulsed suddenly. A wave of heat undulated up my spine, snapping my back ramrod straight. The heat intensified, rippling out through my body to shoot down into my arms and legs. When it reached my face, it seemed to explode, sparks tingling as they travelled across my skin to all the places where I was hurt. I gasped.
The bruises, the scratches, every sign of trauma, had disappeared. Nothing ached, stung or throbbed. For a few heartbeats, as I gaped at the mirror, I saw – I was – a Mio who was completely healed. I saw the Mio I had known before all this began.
Unscarred. Innocent.
Normal.
I clapped my hands to my face – and felt the healing cuts and grazes protest. Instantly the pain of my injuries fell back on me. It was like being caught in a cascade of bricks. I had to lean on the wardrobe door again to stay upright; everything seemed to hurt twice as badly as it had before that second or two of release.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that the image of a perfect me was gone. Gone as if she had never existed.
A hallucination?
An invitation?
The katana hummed. I could feel its energy pushing at me, trying to get into my mind. I shivered, straightening up despite the stiffness and aches.
It doesn’t matter if you were … tempting me or – or punishing me. I don’t trust you. I won’t make any deals with you. If I have to use you, it will be on my terms. You don’t control me.
You don’t own me.
I turned away abruptly from the mirror and pushed the bedroom door open. Shinobu frowned when he saw my expression.
“What—”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s go.”
He lifted his eyebrows at me, but didn’t argue.
A few minutes later we headed out of the front door, stopping briefly to cautiously check for signs of anything hinky before we stepped over the threshold. The sky was a blinding bright white, the thick high clouds like an opaque paper cone thrown over the city. An icy wind whistled down the street, abrading my exposed skin without disturbing the menacing sense of stillness that lay over everything. But it seemed the Shikome, however many of them there were out there, were still searching for us elsewhere. I turned to lock the door behind us, trying to ignore the uneasy itch on the back of my neck.
“All these tall buildings worry me,” Shinobu said from the step below. “The Foul Women could be anywhere. We must be very alert. And walk quickly.”
We had already agreed that we had to walk it. The bus or Tube would take us miles out of our way and we couldn’t afford to lose any more time.
Shinobu had both his blades at his waist again, and he had buttoned my dad’s long coat up over the top to hide them. In the black leather, with his hair severely braided back and his eyes sharply scanning the sky, he practically shouted Armed and Dangerous. I was very much hoping that, at least for today, his invisibility still held.
I clung to the shelter of the doorway for another breath before turning away to march down the steps onto the street. Shinobu fell into step behind me, placing himself slightly to my right. I guessed that was so he wouldn’t get in the way of my blade if I needed to draw it. Which made me feel incredibly conspicuous. I’d walked around London all my life without ever catching, well, anyone’s attention. Up until a few days ago I was just Mio Yamato. An average schoolgirl with a cute, honest face. Patently harmless. The kind of girl that little old ladies stopped in the street to ask for directions. I’d never been in a real fight. I thought of myself, carried myself, like a non-combatant.
But I was different now.
I wasn’t harmless any more. The extra height, speed and strength were the least of it. Now I knew what I was capable of. I knew that I could fight. That I would kill.
What if people could tell by looking at me?
I flicked a glance back at Shinobu and saw that he was scanning the street with focused, intent eyes. One hand rested on the button of his coat, ready to rip it open and grab his blades at any minute. Seeing him made me realize that my own hands were hovering at my sides like a gun-fighter from the Wild West, ready to hit out or draw the katana.
If I’d seen me coming towards me in a dark alley? I’d have run like hell.
“Shinobu, please can you walk next to me like a normal person?”
He opened his mouth on what was clearly destined to be a protest. Then he met my eyes, and his frown eased into a look of understanding. He moved alongside me and held out his hand. I pulled my left hand out of my pocket and let him take it. He twined our fingers together.
“If you watch the streets, I will keep my eyes on the sky,” he said.
My knotted-up shoulders unscrunched from up under my ears, and I squeezed his hand in gratitude. “OK. Thanks.”
We crossed the road hand in hand. I tugged him around the corner onto the shortcut I’d planned across Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Shinobu squinted up at the empty sky, and then turned his attention to me as we walked. “Will you answer a question?”
“It depends what it is,” I said warily.
&
nbsp; “Last night, you said something that … surprised me.”
“Oh. Was it my dad’s Blitz spirit speech? Because I’m kind of thinking that was a load of—”
“No. Actually it was something you said in your sleep.”
My gaze glued itself to his face. “What? What did I say?” Please God, don’t let it have been a sexy dream…
“It was shortly before I woke you. You became disturbed, struggling in your dream. You said a name. Yoshida-sensei. ”
My embarrassment faded, to be replaced with puzzlement. “I did? I have no idea who that is.”
“You have not heard the name before?”
“Not that I can remember.” I frowned up at him. There was a deep crease between Shinobu’s eyebrows and his eyes had that distant look. “But you have. Haven’t you?”
Shinobu hesitated. “Yes. It was the name of the stranger in our village. The newcomer. The one who taught us about the Nekomata, and sent me to fight it.”
The green blade flashes down in the red light—
I flinched as the strange vision burned itself on the back of my eyes again. “You never told me that. Am I – am I dreaming your dreams again? Still? How is that possible?”
“Possible and impossible are relative terms for us,” he said dryly. “Can you remember what you were dreaming about?”
“Well, I still dream about you – about your fight with the Nekomata – a lot. Sometimes I see other things. Fragments. You know how dreams blur together, and you seem to know things in them, but when you wake up none of it makes sense? I thought I was imagining, maybe. What it was like to be you. Lying there in the red leaves, looking up at the sky. I dreamed about … about being someone in your family. Someone who loved you and was waiting for you to come back. Wishing I hadn’t let you go…”
His lips pressed together into a thin line and he turned his head a little, as if to hide his expression from me. I shut up, mentally cursing myself as we left the park and crossed the road to head into a quiet area filled with red-brick buildings and parked cars. At least, at first glance it looked peaceful and quiet. Until you noticed that two of the cars had been attacked, their paint scratched, their windscreens smashed and tyres slashed. One of them, I saw as I got closer, was partially burned.
The large, posh houses around us also showed signs of trouble. Some had boards nailed across their windows on the inside and starburst cracks in the glass. One house had black scorch marks streaking the front door, as if someone had set a fire on the doorstep. Debris crunched underfoot. Rocks, crushed cans, and smashed glass.
What in the world had happened here? It looked like there had been some kind of riot.
As we passed by the Lincoln’s Inn Fields sign onto a narrow, shady road where the buildings on either side had deep arches of greyish-white stonework, a woman turned the corner onto the pavement ahead. She was the first person I had seen outside – not flying by in a car or other vehicle – since we left the house. She did a double-take as she caught sight of us. Then she whipped round and ran in the opposite direction. A moment later I heard a door slam.
My dad had always said that fear makes people do strange things. Bad things. Suddenly my head was filled with a selection of awful possibilities as to how the Shikome’s taint could have sparked this violence. What if someone had asked for shelter here and been turned down – and in their terror they tried to break in? What if people got ill here and no one would come out to help – and someone tried to punish them for it? What if, what if…? There was no way to know for sure. But this couldn’t be a coincidence; it wasn’t just my life that was falling apart. The whole of London was starting to seem frighteningly like a war zone. A war zone packed full of unknowing, unprepared people who were still capable of hurting themselves – and others, too – in their fear.
Shinobu squeezed my hand. “Mio, tell me more. Tell me what else you have seen in your dreams.”
I took a deep breath, forcing my attention back to our conversation. “I keep dreaming different versions of – of you dying. Sometimes I see it from the outside, looking down at you, with you staring up through me. Sometimes I’m inside you, seeing what you see. But the last few times I saw – there was a man there, bending over you. Most of his face was hidden, but you recognized him. He had a sword in his hand. It wasn’t shaped like a regular sword. It was sort of like a leaf, thin at both ends but fatter in the middle, and it was green. And then the blade came down and everything went dark. That’s where the dream ends.”
Shinobu let out a shuddering breath. His fingers had slowly tightened on mine until his grip was almost painful. “I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything after I looked up at the sky and thought of…” His voice trailed off.
“Look, maybe I did imagine it. Maybe it isn’t real,” I said. But even as I said it, I knew that I was talking rubbish. Shinobu’s decisive head shake just confirmed it.
“That cannot be. You spoke his name. I had almost forgotten it myself. That means Yoshida-sensei was there when I died. He precipitated my death. But I cannot understand why. Why follow me into the woods? Why murder a dying man?” He paused. “And … what else might I have forgotten?”
That was a question I would have liked answered, too. Why could I never remember my dreams properly? Why did they always fade as soon as I woke up, leaving me with only vague feelings and disturbing fragments that made no sense? I needed to start trying to piece them together, to make sense of them. I had to be seeing these things for a reason…
A sudden cold shiver raked down my back. My senses ratcheted up to high alert; spinning in place, I caught sight of the dark shape the second it flashed into the sky above us. I shoved Shinobu with all my strength, pushing him back into the shadows of the nearest archway. My momentum slammed me into him as he hit the stone. Swallowing a grunt, I craned my neck to try and keep the monster in sight.
Shinobu’s arms wrapped around me and he swiftly reversed our positions, caging me against the wall with his larger body. He whispered, “Shikome?”
I nodded, my eyes fastened on the sky like grappling hooks. The massive winged shape was darting in and out of sight above the road. For such a huge creature it was incredibly agile.
The thing disappeared. I leaned sideways, trying to catch a glimpse.
“Is it still there?”
“Wait,” I whispered, my instincts still screaming. My hands tightened on Shinobu’s shoulders.
The Shikome dived into the road.
The thundering of its immense wings blasted the air below it, a force-ten gale tainted with the burned-hair-rotten-garbage stink of the monster. My hair and Shinobu’s flew around my face. My ears were filled with the deafening sound of dry, desiccated feathers chittering together. Dead leaves, dust and litter spun around our feet. The monster’s huge paws grazed the buildings on either side of the street as it shot along the narrow gap, sending chips of brick and tile and cement raining down onto the tarmac below. Only the narrowness of the gap stopped it flying lower and seeing us. I closed my eyes and hid my face in Shinobu’s shoulder, breathing through my mouth. His arms crushed me against him.
The sound faded away. The wind died down. The icy-cold tickle on my spine dried up.
“It’s gone,” I said, opening my eyes.
He blew out a relieved breath. “You saved us both.”
“You’re welcome. But don’t think I didn’t notice your little bodyguard manoeuvre just now. You have to stop putting yourself between me and danger like that. I don’t need you to protect me any more.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up as his eyebrow lifted. He probably didn’t even know the phrase, Girl, please, but his expression said it for him.
“Look—”
He leaned down and kissed me.
For about half a second I contemplated smacking him for trying to derail the discussion. Then I decided it could wait.
His fingers cupped my face, cradling my cheek and jaw as if I was made of glass. I foun
d a handful of his soft hair and wound my fingers into it, while curling my other hand into the shoulder of his leather coat. My heart hadn’t even stopped thundering from the Foul Woman’s presence. Now it was thrumming against my ribs again, too fast to count the beats. I did something I’d always secretly wanted to and bit down, very gently, on his beautiful bottom lip. Shinobu’s breath shivered into my mouth, and he pulled me closer.
I was taller now, but not tall enough. Tiptoes didn’t bring me where I wanted to be either. I jumped and hauled myself up the steel pillar of his body, wrapping one leg around his hip. The big, warm hand on my waist slid slowly down the thin fabric of my trousers to cup my thigh, supporting my weight. His other hand was clenched in my hair. A wave of almost painful excitement and yearning crashed through me, and sent me into a full-body shudder that I had no chance of hiding. A tiny moan popped from my lips straight into his.
“Mio. Oh, Mio…” His shaking voice echoed in my ears, mixing with words in Japanese. I recognized some of them. My beloved. My Mio. He pressed his mouth to my eyelid, my cheek, the edge of my jaw, the skin beneath my ear.
There was a loud tearing noise. We both froze.
Abruptly I was aware of the wall against my back, and the tremble in my thigh from hanging onto him like a demented spider monkey. I swallowed and blinked as Shinobu eased back, letting my feet drop to the pavement again. Our eyes met.
“What just…?” I asked.
He cleared his throat. “I think – my shirt.”
I looked down and saw that at some point I’d traded my grip on his hair for a handful of the T-shirt and jumper under his jacket. My fingers had gone straight through the thin wool and made a nice tear in the cotton beneath that too.
“Darn super-strength,” I muttered.
Shinobu’s lip twitched up at the corner again. I snatched my hand away from his ruined clothes and clapped it over his mouth. “No laughing at me,” I said, only half joking. “Not at a moment like this. Romance will die forever and it’ll be your fault.”
He peeled my hand off and pressed a kiss to my palm. “Where are we now? What is this place?”
